Rebel Groups and International Law

苏丹人民解放运动/苏丹军已停止使用儿童兵，而乌干达的上帝抵抗军则继续这种做法。为什么内战中的一些反叛组织遵守战争法，而另一些则不遵守？这个问题令人费解，因为反叛组织通常不是国际法的创造者。此外，在许多情况下，它们在国际法下的权利和义务并不明确。考虑到这种法律和政治环境，以及经常占主导地位的军事战略需要，叛乱组织在什么条件下会遵守战争法？为了解决这个难题，这个项目建议研究为什么国内冲突中的反叛组织遵守国际法。基于顺从和政治合法性的理论，研究者假设叛乱组织遵守战争法时，他们的政治目标是被承认为一个可行的政治实体。为了验证这一假设，研究者将对1991年至2010年内战中武装反对派团体的行为进行统计分析，考察叛乱团体的三种顺从行为：(1)使用儿童兵，(2)杀害平民，(3)对待被拘留者。这个项目之所以重要，有两个原因。从学术的角度来看，该项目解决了一个理论难题，即为什么反叛组织会遵守他们最初并没有制定的国际规则。这个问题在现有文献中没有得到充分的回答，因为国际关系学者迄今为止都把重点放在民族国家的行为上。从实践的角度来看，该项目对人类安全具有广泛的影响。在过去的半个世纪里，约有1700万人死于国内冲突，因此，对拟议研究问题的答案将促进我们对何时以及如何与反叛组织接触并鼓励他们遵守国际法的理解。

The Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army in Sudan has stopped using child soldiers while the Lord's Resistance Army in Uganda continued the practice. Why do some rebel groups in civil wars follow the laws of war while others do not? This question is puzzling because rebel groups are not usually creators of international law. Also, in many cases, their rights and obligations under international law are not clear. Given this legal and political environment and with often-dominating military-strategic imperatives, under what conditions would rebel groups follow the laws of war?To solve the puzzle, this project proposes to study why rebel groups in civil conflicts abide by international law. Grounded on the theories of compliance and political legitimacy, the researcher hypothesizes that rebel groups abide by laws of war when they have political aims to be recognized as a viable political entity. To test the hypothesis, the researcher will statistically analyze the behaviors of armed opposition groups in civil wars between 1991 and 2010 to examine three compliance behaviors of rebel groups: (1) the use of child soldiers, (2) the killing of civilians, and (3) the treatment of detainees.The project is important for two reasons. From a scholarly point of view, the project solves a theoretical puzzle as to why rebel groups would follow international rules that they did not initially create. The question has not been fully answered in the existing literature because scholars of international relations have thus far focused on the behavior of nation-states. From a practical point of view, the project has broad impacts for human security. As some seventeen million people have died in civil conflicts over the past half-century, the answer to the proposed research question will advance our understanding about when and how to engage rebel groups and encourage them to comply with international law.